GUARDIAN OF LIES by Steve Martini

While the rest of the world moves along at its regular pace, life is about to get extremely hectic and dicey for Paul Madriani. A chance encounter with a beautiful young woman in the produce section of a supermarket connects this San Diego attorney with events that will change his life and the United States forever.

Katia Solaz has been lured from Costa Rica to San Diego by a coin collector, an older man named Emerson Pike. He is in essence keeping her against her will with padded gloves of small shopping trips, jewelry and excuses deluxe. While in Costa Rica, Emerson happened to see pictures on Katia's camera, pictures that excited him to no end. After copying them onto his computer and convincing Katia that she needs to see San Diego, he starts the international wheels into motion.

Someone called the Mexicutioner is hired to kill Katia and Emerson and to retrieve all evidence of the photos. The night the hired man enters Emerson's home and kills him is the same night Katia steals a small amount of his coins, enough to get back to Costa Rica, and slips out of the house, therefore saving her life. But she is soon caught and charged with murder. The police discover Paul Madriani's business card in her purse and before Madriani knows what has hit him, he is implicated in the coin collector's murder. The FBI become involved and bug Madriani and his partner's office and homes, then set tails on their every movement, while the District Attorney is hoping to snag both Madriani and the FBI.

Meanwhile, an Arab named Alim with ties to Cuba has been planning a grand retaliation on the United States for the deaths of his family members. He has sent the Mexicutioner to take care of Katia and Emerson Pike. He holds Katia's grandfather, the guardian of a Russian uranium bomb such as the one used over Hiroshima, in Colombia, South America, awaiting a chain of events to occur so he can transport the bomb to his desired destination.

Madriani uses what little information he has gleaned from Katia to prove she did not kill Emerson and get himself out of the hot water he seems to be sinking deeper into. His efforts take him from San Diego to Costa Rica to Mexico and back to the United States, where his path crosses several times with the Mexicutioner and ultimately with Alim. A desperate race with time is all that stands between Madriani and a catastrophic tragedy.

Steve Martini's thriller, GUARDIAN OF LIES, continues with Paul Madriani, a solid, genuinely caring defense attorney who is compelled to seek the truth. His character is refreshing; the well-crafted plot succinctly moves in a straightforward motion to a satisfying conclusion.

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SUMMARY

Defense attorney Paul Madriani gets caught in a web of deceit and murder involving Cold War secrets, a rare coin dealer who once worked for the CIA, and a furious assassin in one of the most entertaining novels yet in this New York Times bestselling series.

A woman pauses in the hallway of a darkened San Diego beach house at night— listening for just the right moment when she can flee before her companion notices that she's gone.

A man outside watches the same mansion, waiting for a sign that he can enter on his mission of blood and carnage.

So begins this riveting new tale about Paul Madriani and his latest case—that of Katia, a woman accused of an unlikely crime—a trial that will unravel a careful but horrifying conspiracy. Madriani soon realizes that he's signed onto something much more sinister than a botched heist. As he searches for the truth that will clear Katia's name, he finds himself on a path that takes him from Southern California to Costa Rica, and, ultimately, to a secret buried since Castro's rise to power.

Together with his partner, Harry Hinds, Madriani must piece together the threads of a decades-old conspiracy involving priceless gold coins, an aging American spy, a disaffected Russian soldier, and a forgotten weapon from the days of JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the separate strands of the story come together, Madriani finds information that will ultimately lead him to the one person who holds the key to it all: a man some call "The Guardian of Lies."

In this fascinating thriller from New York Times bestselling author Steve Martini, Paul Madriani faces his most challenging—and most urgent—case yet, a breathless story that combines fact and fiction and will hold readers captive until its final, explosive conclusion.